AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage

AT&T Inc. is keeping schtum over what appears to be a major U-verse outage that began during the morning of Jan. 21 and which appears to have affected a substantial number of customers across the southern states of the U.S.
While the operator's website, blogs and Twitter feeds have no messages regarding any ongoing service problems -- the most recent tweet on AT&T's official @Uverse feed early Tuesday states "Today we honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dreams for equality. #MLK" while the @ATTCustomerCare feed has no mention of any disruption -- customers have been using their smartphones to criticize the company for its service failure and lack of information about the outage.
One customer, Tony Casas (‏@tonycasas), tweeted: "Wow…. On the Phone with #ATT #Uverse 'troubleshooting' for 52 minutes before they inform me that half the US is experiencing an outage," while many others complained of having no Web access or TV service during the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
One customer who tweeted using the #uverse hashtag noted that "theories abound about cause from DHCP servers down to hacking of system. Grrrr."
The AT&T U-verse page on Facebook was also swamped with messages from angry customers wanting to know why AT&T was providing no information about the outage.
Light Reading Editor-in-Chief Phil Harvey, another user who relies on the U-verse triple-play package for his communication and entertainment services, says he was "down all day" Monday, though that may have had something to do with his caffeine intake.
AT&T declined to pinpoint which service areas are affected by the outages or provide a reason for them, but the company released this statement Monday night: "A limited number of AT&T customers in some markets may be experiencing issues with U-verse service. A team of engineers and technicians are working to resolve the issue, and we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers."
If you are a U-verse customer and experienced service disruption, please comment on the message boards below, stating where you are located and when your services went down and, if restored, when you were reconnected.
— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage Our internet and cable have been down since Monday.-á The phone system is computer generated.-á I have called the 800.288.2020 several times and I'm still waiting to talk to technical support person.-á A local ATT installation guy told me this morning that the ETA is unknown.-á We live in Texas and it's been 3 days.-á Thank goodness for modems on cellphone devices.-á -á

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage I'm astonished that a company like this would have such a long outage of such a major service. Clearly they're skimping on redundancy somewhere. I'm a FIOS customer and outages have been very few and almost all connected to major weather events. I'd go nuts and my wife and kid would be screaming in withdrawl.-á

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage Every news release or blog I've read states "limited outages in southern states. Wrong! My system is down and I live in the Detroit area, a major U-verse market. A U-verse tech support person in India told me that outages are nationwide (a slip of the tongue). Is AT&T trying to keep a major nationwide outage embarrassment quiet?

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage I am in Raleigh and have been without service since 4am Monday eastern time.-á Limited info from ATT.-á They have told me 32 states are experiencing problems.

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage I think it's the other way around. Lance, et. al. learned that lying by example. AT&T has a long history of denying network outages and making false claims about network reliability (be that product or rhetoric). The so called "Five 9's" of telephony is less than 5 minutes of outages annually. From what I've heard about this outage they've already dropped below the three nine's (99.9%) (that's 8.76 hours outages max) threshold FOR THE YEAR and it's only January 22.-á-á

re: AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage AT&T is still mum on affected markets, but the complaints to DSL Reports indicate (http://www.dslreports.com/show... -áthat in addition to Texas, there are issues in Louisiana, Kentucky,-áGeorgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Arkansas. JB

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